Expectations are high for Paladins again

“It’s a long season, and we have to try to get our bodies in better shape. You have to recruit better players with better frames, and you’ve got to develop them once you get them here. I think we’ve addressed that as best as we can.” – CLAY HENDRIX, FURMAN HEAD COACH

Furman’s football team was a little bit ahead of coach Clay Hendrix’s schedule in 2017.

The former Paladin wanted to be competitive in his first season back with the program, but he had no more specific expectations. It certainly didn’t help that the Paladins started off 0-3, although two of those losses were by a total of four points to eventual Southern Conference champion Wofford and Elon, which wound up making the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs out of the Colonial Athletic Association.

Furman’s coaches continued to sell the players on doing things their way, hoping for a breakthrough. It eventually came, and the Paladins went 8-2 the rest of the way, losing to Wofford in the second round of the playoffs.

For a proud program with a national championship on its résumé, the turnaround was a positive step.

Once the season was over, Hendrix went to work trying to strengthen the players in the program. He started spring practice Feb. 2 — a week before national signing day — with the spring game held Feb. 24.

“I wanted uninterrupted lifting from March 1 through the spring,” Hendrix said by phone Wednesday. “We just played so many young guys last year. I like a lot of the bodies we had, but they were immature bodies that needed to be in a college football program, a strength program. I thought we were knocked around a little bit sometimes last year against better teams, and I thought a good year in the weight room would change that, and I think it has.

“It’s a long season, and we have to try to get our bodies in better shape. You have to recruit better players with better frames, and you’ve got to develop them once you get them here. I think we’ve addressed that as best as we can.”

The Paladins return 14 starters — nine on defense — but one of their biggest losses came at quarterback.

P.J. Blazejowski was the perfect fit for Hendrix’s double-wing offense, rushing for 318 yards and a pair of scores last season while being the most efficient passer in the SoCon, completing 61 percent of his passes for 2,461 and 19 scores. In his absence, two players — fifthyear senior Harris Roberts and redshirt freshman JeMar Lincoln — have battled for the vacated slot, with little separation.

Hendrix said he “wouldn’t be opposed” to playing both, although he figured the position’s order would work itself out during the preseason.

“They’re similar in a lot of ways and different in a lot of ways,” Hendrix said. “Depending on who is in there, we might emphasize a few more things in our offense based on which one is in there, but I think they can both run our offense.

“Anytime you can run the football efficiently, you can protect those guys a bit and not put too much on them. A lot of people thought when I got here we would run the triple-option, but we’re not a triple-option team. We certainly do some of that; that’s not who we are, but we want to make people defend that part of what we do. A lot of people told me you can’t mix what we’re doing, but I think you can. We don’t want a running back playing quarterback; we want a dual threat. We won’t recruit a quarterback that can’t throw like we want them to throw it.”

In the 2017 preseason, with little known about the Paladins other than who was on their roster and that Hendrix was their coach, Furman was picked to finish seventh in the SoCon but wound up second. Now the expectations of being Furman are back, and the team was picked second in one SoCon preseason poll and third in the other, with seven players earning All-SoCon preseason honors as announced Wednesday.

“I just think that day by day, you have to do the things that got you there,” Hendrix said of the heightened expectations this year. “They picked us seventh last year; what did that prove? The same thing could go the other way, but I’d much rather be highly thought of than to be in situations where we’re not very good.

“I didn’t know how long this would take, but I think we’ve got our kids now talking about winning a conference championship and making the playoffs. We’ve won a national championship here (1988), and that’s the goal. The kids have bought into that aspect of it, and we’ve got to do things we need to do to give us that chance.”

Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3.